William James Quotes

"Man can alter his life by altering his thinking."
-William James

"When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice."
-William James in Choice quotes.

"The sovereign cure for worry is prayer."
-William James

"As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use."
-William James

"A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind."
-William James

"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."
-William James in Attitude quotes.

"We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be."
-William James

"The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures."
-William James

"Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible."
-William James in Faith quotes.

"There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self."
-William James

"I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible."
-William James

"There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers."
-William James in Philosophy quotes.

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind."
-William James in Attitude quotes.

"An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation."
-William James

"If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it."
-William James

"Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings."
-William James

"I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing."
-William James

"Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."
-William James

"Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendship and intimacies, and soon their places will know them no more, and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to 'keep' by force of inertia."
-William James

"New habits can be launched . . . on condition of there being new stimuli and new excitements."
-William James

"If you want a quality, act as if you already had it."
-William James

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices."
-William James in Prejudice quotes.

"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact."
-William James

"The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist."
-William James

"This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it."
-William James

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. "
-William James

"No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may retain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved."
-William James